The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite

By Robert D. Kaplan. New York: The Free Press, 1993, 333 pp. Bibliography and Index. List: $24.95.

Reviewed by Arthur L. Lowrie

The subject of this book (U.S. foreign service officers who studied Arabic and specialized in Middle Eastern affairs—of whom the reviewer is one) would appear to be of such limited interest that one wonders why it was written and why a major publisher would publish it. It has some fascinating chapters on the 19th century British explorers and American missionaries, some entertaining portraits of top, but heretofore obscure, Arabists, and what apparently is the inside story of the rescue of the Falasha Jews from Ethiopia. For the rest, it is filled with halftruths, generalizations, and lots of damning by faint praise.

Kaplan describes the "traditional Arabist views" as a deep respect for British Arabists of yore, a belief that "Israel's displacement of the Palestinian people is the core problem of the Middle East and responsible in large part for the region's violence and instability," and a belief that a strong president can override a domestic lobby in the pursuit of U.S. national interests. Kaplan's litmus test to judge Arabists is whether they are pro or anti-Israeli. In fact, most of us were neither one nor the other, but pro-American. We viewed Israel as a country with special ties to the U.S. for whose security the U.S. had a moral and realpolitik responsibility. We did not, however, favor giving Israel carte blanche to pursue its policies regardless of their impact on the extensive U.S. interests throughout the region (which the book never discusses). Kaplan also omits any mention of events that might have caused Arabists (and others) to question Israel's value as an "ally" (e.g., the Lavon affair, the secret Dimona reactor, the attack on the USS Liberty, Begin's duplicity at Camp David over a moratorium on settlements, the Jonathan Pollard spy case).

Kaplan's most exaggerated claim is that Arabists "have been the secret drivers of America's Middle East policy since the end of World War II." This will come as a great shock to Arabists who have spent their careers bemoaning their impotence over policy. If this statement were true, American policy would have been different in some important respects. Israel's well-being and security would certainly have been guaranteed, but the Likud policy of establishing "facts on the ground" in the form of settlements would not have been financed—directly or indirectly—by the U.S., nor would the annexation and expansion of East Jerusalem. The U.S. would not have acquiesced in the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and oppression of 1.5 million Palestinians for the past 27 years, and it decidedly would not have tacitly accepted and indirectly financed the Israeli nuclear arsenal that has resulted in the Muslim states' continuing search for nuclear weapons, threatening the entire area with eventual nuclear war.

The fact is that Arabists have had only a marginal impact on American policy. The real power was and is in the Congress, which has a record of increasing aid to Israel regardless of events or recommendations from the bureaucracy. A prominent Arabist and then assistant secretary of state for the Middle East described his job to me as "damage limitation, not policy making."

Another career diplomat who held the same position but made it clear to the media that, despite his service in Arab posts, he was not an "Arabist" because he had not formally studied Arabic, is described by Kaplan as the "most successful and influential of his generation of Middle East specialists,'' in part because of "his personal growth regarding the Arab-Israeli problem." In the view of many Arabists, however, he and his patron, Joseph Sisco, who spoke no Arabic and never served in the Middle East, represent those who saw where the political power in Washington resided when it came to the region and tailored their views accordingly. It was diplomats of this school who provided justification for a onesided pro-Israeli policy by rationalizing that the Israelis had to feel secure before they would make concessions, and that the U.S. had to bring the Israelis along through persuasion because pressure would only make them harden their positions. Such rationalization thereby set the stage for the American acquiescence in the Likud's rapid expansion of settlements in the 1980s, which today is the principal obstacle to peace.

Kaplan saves his real vitriol for former Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, whom he sees as the embodiment of all the anti-Israeli and pro-Arab traits one would expect from Kaplan's "old school" Arabist. Glaspie is accused of having been the key author of the Bush policy of coddling Iraq while the president and Secretary of State Baker were busy dealing with the collapse of communism. This is attributing to an ambassador unprecedented power over the complex national security decision-making machinery. The fact is that in late 1989 President Bush signed NSDD 26, which called for increased economic assistance for Iraq. From then on, April Glaspie was loyally carrying out American policy, including her participation in the famous meeting of July 25, 1990 with Saddam Hussain. Kaplan reveals his pettiness by alleging not once but three times that following that meeting Glaspie went "on vacation," confident that Iraq would not move against Kuwait. In fact, and surely Kaplan knows it, Glaspie was ordered back to Washington for consultations.

The book contains other errors of fact and omission. For example, the passage on Saddam Hussain's April 1990 speech mentions only that he "threatened to burn half of Israel" and omits the crucial fact that he said that this would happen if Israel attacked Iraq with nuclear weapons. Kaplan has the Baghdad Pact established in 1958, the year Iraq's withdrawal forced it to relocate to Ankara and reestablish itself as CENTO, and leaves out the United Kingdom as a member. Nit-picks? Perhaps, but the errors and omissions throughout the book all conveniently support Kaplan's views.

As I suggested in the beginning, this is a book to be read if you are truly interested in the Middle East, but one to be read with great caution and skepticism.